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Are we ready to enter the trans-human era?

Francisco Miraval

There was a time millennia ago, historians say, when humans lived inside caves. And, according to some futurists, in just a few decades we will leave the modern versions of those old caves to live inside a world of holographic bodies and digital brains.

None other than Ray Kuzweil, one of the geniuses of our time and working for Google since last December, recently said that in a matter of three decades it will be possible to incorporate powerful, small computers (not larger than a blood cell) into our bodies. Soon after that, we will have digital brains. Each brain will surpass the combined capacity of all human brains on the planet at this time.

At least that is what I thought he said. After all, I was using just my old brain, almost obsolete for this time and totally obsolete for the upcoming future.

I recently shared some of Kuzweil’s observations with a good of friends, telling them there is a chance we will see the technological singularity that will give immortality to humans. They had a good laugh with that idea. I think they would have taken me more seriously if I would have said I play cards every Tuesday with a Big Foot inside his spaceship.

Whatever the case, there was a time when everybody though our planet was flat and the Sun orbited around the earth. People also said nothing heavier than air will ever fly. And after the invention of the telephone, somebody said the phone was just a toy. And in the 1950’s, people thought in the whole world there was a need for only five computers.

When I was a child, I remember reading stories about the impossibility of going to the moon or that it will be always impossible to perform a heart transplant. I also remember another story, published probably 40 years ago, that said computers had reached their maximum capacity.

And what about the gorilla, the okapi, the platypus, and the giant squid, that until a relatively recent time were thought to exist just in the imagination of “primitive” people?

From another point of view, there was a time when it was believed that humans were the center of the universe and the pinnacle of creation. And rationality was considered to be the highest expression of humanity. Then, Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, with their followers and detractors, changed those ideas.

There are many more examples about how wrong we humans were in the past, but the point is that, based on those examples, the only conclusion we can draw is that the ideas we now accept as unquestionable true perhaps are not.

If it is true that we are about to enter in the trans-human era (and, as Kuzweil recently said during a radio interview, it will be “irresponsible” not to do it), are we really prepared for such an irreversible transformation?

Suddenly, talking about immigration reform, cuts in the federal budget, or even my retirement plan sounds almost irrelevant.

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